Though widely considered to be part of Shakespeare’s comic canon, As You Like It also takes a walk on the dark side. It is a study in contrasts, a pastoral comedy and romance with a satirical bite.

“I’m interested in the darker aspects crashing up against the comic aspects,” says Director Lynn Nichols, directing his fifth Shakespeare work at CU. He also has directed two productions for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.

The play moves between the vengeful world of the court and the pastoral rejuvenation of the forest of Arden. Rosalind, daughter of a disgraced duke — who has the most lines of any female character in the canon — is banished. She assumes the identity of a boy named Ganymede and travels with her cousin and the jester Touchstone to the forest, where love, laughter and learning coincide.

The production will merge a traditional Elizabethan approach with modern acting techniques. “We are doing a period Shakespeare that’s not a museum approach,” says the director.